An avatar is often a computer representation of a user. The avatar typically takes the form of a two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) model in various environments such as computer games, applications, chats, forums, communities, and instant messaging services, for example.
Avatars typically include meshes that represent surfaces of the computer representation of the user. The meshes may include contours that depict 3D aspects of the computer representation of the user. A mesh is often generated at the direction of a human designer. Traditionally, the designer manually generates virtual items, such as eyeballs, and manually associates the virtual items with the mesh to generate an avatar.
An avatar may be animated, for example, by manipulating the mesh of the avatar using a virtual device that may be referred to as a virtual skeleton or rig. A virtual skeleton usually includes a collection of inter-related reference points that correspond to portions of the mesh. The virtual skeleton changes the relationships between the interconnected reference points to manipulate the mesh. Each manipulation of the mesh corresponds to a respective configuration of the avatar.
Configurations of avatars are often depicted using sequential virtual snapshots that represent respective physical configurations of the corresponding object. For example, configurations of an avatar that represents a video conference participant may illustrate movements (e.g., eye, lip, head, and arm movements) of the participant during the video conference. In accordance with this example, the configurations may be communicated to other participants of the video conference.
Conventional techniques for providing an avatar virtual skeleton involve tedious design of the avatar virtual skeleton based on a computer application or computer environment that will implement or use the virtual skeleton. The design or selection of the virtual skeleton is often time consuming. Furthermore, the design the virtual skeleton often necessitates use of a computer user interface (UI). Such interface time with the computer UI may cause undesirable memory use, processor use and/or battery drain associated with a computing device that implements the computer UI used to design or select the virtual skeleton.